Poll

Today's Opinions

Ethics and morality are different.
Ethics involves “developing personal qualities of excellence.” The big picture, morality, “requires command-issuing universal law… willingness to obey the laws of God and nature.” The distinction comes from Eva Brann, a teacher at St. John’s College.
Now comes the advent of Moral Monday, a construct in New Mexico of the New Mexico Federation of Labor, according to New Mexico Voices for Children, which used the Feb. 9 event to pitch its agenda through 10 speakers.
Wikipedia calls Moral Monday “a grassroots social justice movement” that began in 2013 in North Carolina in response to the evil (my word) conservative deeds of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, elected in 2012 along with Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. Getting arrested seems part of the North Carolina approach.
The approach here seems more laid back, from what I can deduce from the Voices release.
Still, the whole thing is fraught with arrogance. Nothing seems to be happening that has passing acquaintance with the laws of God and nature. Pope Francis seems to have cornered this topic with his continuing message of pastoral work.
Government is quite different. Go way back to 1690 and John Locke, who provided an early articulation of today’s approach.

Our courts require additional resources to meet the justice needs of New Mexico’s citizens. Each day, courts address the aftermath of strained social and economic conditions, including crime, child and domestic abuse, and broken family and business relationships. Our independent court system also supports economic growth and investment by enforcing contracts and resolving business and property disputes. And it does all of this with less than 3 percent of the state’s overall budget.
Inadequately funding the Judiciary undermines our ability to serve the public and fulfill our constitutional responsibility to provide fair, timely and impartial justice to all New Mexicans.

House Bill 41, the controversial mandatory flunking bill passed the House floor by a vote of 38-30.
“We need to get our priorities straight. Our children’s education is crucial to our state’s success and we should be making an honest effort to make sure that they are thriving. This bill pushed through by Republicans will prevent generations of New Mexicans from getting a fair shot to succeed. Flunking children is not the way to advance our state. I am incredibly disappointed that Republicans continue to assault our children’s futures by forcing legislation in order to gain cheap political points,” said Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton (D-Albuquerque).
“This particular piece of legislation is problematic for many reasons. Mandatory flunking is a sweeping measure that does not account for the individual circumstances of each student when they are faced with retention.

There was a big celebration in Taos last weekend, at the center of which were two pieces of legislation enacted by the last Congress.
Who would have thought? A celebration of a couple of bills passed by one of the most maligned and unpopular Congresses ever convened under the Capitol Dome!
Yet there they were — the measures’ key sponsors, U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, former-U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, Congressman Ben Ray Luján — congregated for the at-home unveiling of the Columbine Hondo Wilderness Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama on Dec. 19 and for, as well, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Act, which went into effect with the president’s signature one week earlier.
The Columbine Hondo Wilderness Act is precisely what the name says it is, but the process of bringing it into being began in 1980, three-and-a-half decades ago, when Congress passed the Columbine Hondo Wilderness Study Act.
In other words, such are the ways of our national legislature that it took a sum total of 35 years of “study” for Congress to finally decide to set aside some 46,000 acres of a pristine mountain basin situated in the Sangre de Cristos near Taos.

As the national economy shows signs of real improvement, New Mexico’s recovery has been challenging and slow.
Working families want to know when we will see more jobs, higher salaries and access to quality education at every level. The state legislature has an opportunity to put New Mexico in a position to provide that economic security and rebuild the middle class.
Unfortunately, the first bill to gain traction at the Roundhouse is a divisive plan backed by out-of-state political operatives designed to divide working families. The so-called Right-to-Work plan championed by special interests would do more harm than good.
Consider these consequences:
• In states with similar anti-worker laws, workers earn, on average, $5,000 less each year than their counterparts in competing states.
• Six in 10 states with the highest unemployment rates have these anti-worker laws.
• Twelve of the 14 states with the worst pay gap between men and women are anti-worker states.
• Workers in states with these anti-worker laws earn fewer benefits.
• Worker safety suffers in these anti-worker states where the rate of deaths on the job is 54.4 percent higher.

Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard was explaining economic-base jobs to fellow members of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee.
The Los Alamos teacher had learned as an advisory member of the Jobs Council that economic-base jobs sell goods or services outside the state.
It was one of those moments of clarity that cut through the political haze. Finally, after years of chasing anything that might have a payroll, lawmakers are educating themselves on the basics of a real economy.
This is why the pyrotechnics last week in the House Judiciary Committee over Right-to-Work was so disheartening. In the last two years, the Jobs Council drew together both parties, along with business, labor, the administration and councils of government, to create proposals that would move us down the road.
Now House members were jeopardizing that bipartisan goodwill with marathon, brutal debates over union membership as a condition of employment.
Twice last week, the cavernous House chamber filled with business people and labor, one suited up, the other in blue jeans.
They’re two sides of the same pancake. They need each other, they all want jobs and there is plenty of legislation that they do agree on.
In the Republican-majority House committee, Right-to-Work was bound to pass, just as it will on the floor.

Presidents Day reflections typically commemorate the exploits of two of our larger than life chief executives whose birthdays we celebrate in February — George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. This piece instead assesses the contributions of a different American colossus — James Madison — and examines the War of 1812 as we observe the 200th anniversary of the treaty that ended the conflict, which the U.S. Congress approved on Feb. 16, 1815.
Madison’s image does not adorn Mount Rushmore, and he has no memorial in Washington, D.C. However, he played a pivotal role in devising the United States, especially in framing the Constitution and promoting religious liberty. One of the nation’s most cerebral and articulate founders, he served in numerous legislative bodies, including the Continental Congress and the House of Representatives.
Madison penned the extremely influential Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments in 1785 to argue for ending Virginia’s Episcopal establishment and providing complete religious freedom. Historians label it “the most powerful defense of religious liberty ever written in America.” No other founder had as much impact on the nation’s conception and practice of freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state.

I am writing to correct any misperceptions that may have been created by the Los Alamos Monitor’s coverage of my comments to the County Council regarding the Open Space Management Plan made at Feb. 6 meeting.
As reported, I am a member of the County Planning and Zoning Commission. The Los Alamos Monitor’s story stated I opposed the Open Space Management Plan. That is not correct. At the beginning my verbal comments, I voiced my support for the Open Space Management Plan, that it was necessary and long overdue.
My comments were critical of two portions of the plan:
• The provision proposing, in effect, a Vista/Viewpoint zoning overlay district, without any guidance on how to enact it.
• The inclusion in the proposed open space map of virtually all of the vacant land owned by the county (not all the vacant land in the county), particularly a large parcel in Pueblo Canyon adjacent to the sewer plant, recently acquired from the federal government and previously proposed for economic development by the Open Space Advisory Group.